K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

I heard the news today, oh boy

I suppose, as a legitimate owner of a copy of Windows XP, I should be at least a little bit pleased to learn that the operating system got a sort of new (albeit backhanded) lease on life the other day. Strangely though, the concept is little more than lukewarm for me.

I don’t count myself as a Windows owner, mostly because I’ve really only taken advantage of that OS on its licensed host once for a realistic amount of time … if two or three days is realistic. And it wasn’t such a terrific experience that I am looking forward to a long future with it.

Winning a longer “lease” on Windows XP is kind of like winning a lottery for Monopoly money: It’s a fun idea, but nothing I haven’t seen before, and definitely not anything I can put to use. I’ve mentioned before that Windows falls flat for me and more and more I’d sooner go without it, thank you very much. It can’t do some of the simplest things I need out of a system (or at least not without requiring the purchase of third-party software), and the more I use it, the more I am convinced it’s simply designed to be mediocre. With complete malice aforethought.

I’d make a pitch for a longer life span for Windows 2000 at this point, but I’m not real sure about that either. Even some short forays into the backwaters of Windows 2000 have been rather stunting to me, and that was the operating system I liked. It’s been on this machine for about a week now, and it still hasn’t finished updating itself. I can’t imagine XP in another 10 years — what would that be? Service Pack 14? How many reboots would that take to bring up to date? 😯

So yeah, I suppose I’ll calmly accept the “10-year extension” on the operating system that came with the computer I bought, even if I expect — as do others — that it’s not all it’s reported to be. XP isn’t something I like or want or use or even reminisce over, but I suppose it’s worth … acknowledging. 😐

I haven’t been running windows on my machines in years, not because I have something against it, just because linux fits me better.
If I would try it out now I think that I would try out one of the alternative shells, like bbLean or the like, has anyone any experience with those? A tiler would be fun too, but I’m not sure how well it would work without a good shell, if I install cygwin too, I have just a worse imitation of a linux system :p